Women’s leadership and ecofeminism in the metacrisis

jembendell

“Our Mother Earth Says Me Too!”

“Our Mother Earth Says Me Too!”

It was a gorgeous but disturbingly warm day in London, seven years ago. I was inviting the crowd to chant with me, as I gave the opening speech of the international rebellion, in Oxford Circus. In the two weeks after April 15th, 2019, the campaign group Extinction Rebellion forced greater attention to how rapid climate change threatens our way of life, not just that of the polar bears. The #MeToo movement was in the news at the time, with people challenging defeatist attitudes on sexual harrassment and sexual violence. Seeing violence towards the environment as arising from the same heartless habits that harm women and girls, I wanted to make the connection in my speech. I also knew that many women were taking leading roles in the new wave of civil disobedience on climate ignorance. I wanted to make the big picture of how we collectively violate the Earth to be felt as something that is also expressed in our interpersonal relations. 

“Today and this week, we will have the honour of seeing mothers and grandmothers putting their bodies on the line for the defence of Life itself. For the defence of your children. So I see the women protesting today as our elders. They are here for you. They are here for me. They are here for all of us. So to our police, I say, when you lay a hand on mothers and grandmothers you will not just be doing your job. It will be your personal decision to participate today, in a process of oppressing women and their wisdom that reaches back thousands of years. An oppression that is at the root of our crisis today. All of us, including the police, can remove ourselves from that chain of destruction. We can refrain from that act of uninvited touch. So I ask you to listen to the loving call of nature in your own hearts. And you might hear that Our Mother Earth Says Me Too.”

After the speech, one of the organisers joked that “the ecofeminists probably had an orgasm.” She was referring to people who regard the same hierarchical, paternalistic and dualistic thinking that enables the domination of women as also enabling environmental destruction. A core idea of ecofeminism is that Western ideology has associated women with nature and men with culture in a way which devalues both women and nature. You’ll know the stereotypes, where body, emotion, and intuition are associated with women and mind, reason, and civilization are associated with men. Whatever the biologically or sociologically shaped tendencies within women and men on such matters, regarding some qualities associated with the masculine gender as requiring prioritisation, is a root cause of both sexism and environmental destruction. In short, ecofeminism perceives that we cannot slow down the ecological crisis without addressing gender inequality, and vice versa. 

The destruction being led by toxic masculine individuals on both the world stage and in bigtech is no surprise to ecofeminists, and seems to add weight to that worldview. The awesome work of women in responding to ecological and social malaise is also a pointer towards the relevance of a gender lens on the era of ‘metacrisis’ that humanity has clearly entered. Last year, a surge in environmental leadership by women’s organisations was described by Inside Climate News. It reported on the group Amazonian Women Defenders of the Rainforest, in Ecuador. They resist oil and mineral extraction on their ancestral lands, which has brought pollution, violence, and sexual exploitation. Their tactics include organizing protests, physical forest monitoring, legal action (such as winning a landmark case at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights), reforestation projects, and building Indigenous-led businesses. There are many other examples of women’s organisations being on the front line in challenging destruction. Sadly, much of that now involves challenging the mining activities of companies that are being supported by professional ‘environmentalists’ who prioritise electrifying everything over a smart, holistic, fair and accountable green agenda: AKA most ‘environmentalists’ you and I know today (see the ‘fake green fairytale’). 

As the effects of accelerating climate change kick in, many women are leading the response in communities. A new film profiles some of that women’s leadership, called ‘Emergence: women in the storm’. I recommend the trailer alone, for its gobsmackingly inspiring string of statements from women who are doing what’s best in a bad situation. It reminded me that when the Deep Adaptation movement was taking off in 2019, I wanted to draw attention to the ideas and initiatives of women on environmental and social issues, so I hosted many Q&As with women leaders. Simona Vaitkute reviewed some of the crosscutting themes from those conversations. One theme she identified was that our environmental imagination needs to move beyond technological fixes and lifestyle changes. Instead, mainstream environmental movements need to drop the “progress story” of managerial salvation. In the place of such failing hubris, we could learn more from communities who have endured oppression and loss – including Indigenous peoples and those in the Global South already suffering climate impacts. The consistent message from the women I interviewed was not to focus on anger or blame, but on healing, including the recovery from a fictional “story of separation” between the Earth, each other, and ourselves. Those women told us of a path forward that involves vulnerability, reconnecting with intuition, and a place for inclusive rituals of healing. 

Those themes were important to two of my friends, who were important women leaders on environmental change and justice and passed away last year. One was Joanna Macy. After she discovered my work on Deep Adaptation, she and I chatted with some fellow travellers, online, once a month for over a year. I had used Joanna’s workshop guidance for years previously, to help people viscerally sense that we are part of a web of life, rather than atop a pyramid of domination. As the Deep Adaptation framework and networks took off, I realised her methods for how we honour and express our difficult emotions about the state of the world would be key. She reminded us that our pain is a result of our love. It was an invitation to escape the dishonest and toxic optimism that the culture of patriarchy promotes, especially in our professional relations.  

I remember when I visited Joanna in her house in Berkeley that there was a wall crammed top to bottom with pictures of all her family and friends. As I looked at it, I immediately had the voice of Ram Das in my mind. A famous American spiritual teacher, associated with the New Age, he once joked that he sometimes fell back into being the lecherous Dick Alpert, and would ask a fan he fancied: “would you like to come up and see my spiritual pictures?” As I looked at Joanna’s wall of love, I thought these were her spiritual pictures. An embodied spirituality, without a separation between life and the divine, is one that does not rely on images of Gods or Gurus. 

Joanna lived into her 90s, but sadly Stella Nyambura Mbau left us much younger. Previously a youth climate activist, she had become a lecturer in Kenya, and worked on the Agroforestry Regeneration Communities initiative. I enjoyed working with Stella, including presentations at COP27 in Egypt. In her quiet voice, she didn’t flinch from a damning critique of the mainstream agenda on agriculture (here and here). She helped me understand how that self-appointed expert on all things, Bill Gates, had rather dumb ideas on how to improve the resilience of farms and farming communities in the face of rapid climate change. The analysis reminded me of one most coherent voices against ‘Gatesian’ managerialist approaches to society — the ecofeminist Vandana Shiva. Over the years, I was pleased to help Stella get her views published for an international audience, even if only in the niche publication Resilience. 

When discussing these issues, the term “patriarchy” comes up. I need to keep reminding myself that most people think it simply means ‘rule by men’ and that a critique of it means blaming men for all of humanity’s ills. So, the academic in me wants to pause and define terms. For me, and most people who use the term as a useful one for understanding our situation, the term ‘patriarchy’ describes a cultural system that advances characteristics and values that are regarded as masculine, subordinating those regarded as more feminine. That enables societal systems where men typically exert more power, in areas including political leadership, moral authority, social privilege, the control of property, and the value of work. These systems are produced by both men and women, although with differing agency, and can oppress people of any gender, sometimes compounding other unequal hierarchies of identity. The term ‘feminist’ is also widely misunderstood as something only describing women who focus on women’s issues, rather than referring to any of us who recognise that unequal power relations between genders goes against our core values of human dignity, freedom, and self-actualisation. 

Not all women who we might recognise as ecofeminists choose that description for themselves. Any term can ‘pigeon hole’ people, as much as convene them. My own misunderstanding that feminist analysis could only be about women held me back for years from exploring the resonance between my critiques of research methodologies and those made by feminist scholars. When, far later in my career, a committee blocked my institutions’ participation in a ‘women’s leadership’ research consortium, as they regarded it as ‘off topic’ to sustainability, I was reminded that patriarchal ‘pigeon holing’ of the feminine as  niche and marginal remains widespread, and with major implications for resources and attention. I mention that past experience as what’s key today is that we recognise that women leaders can be leaders for all of us, and that feminist critiques in general can be holistic agendas for all of us. 

Ecofeminist inspiration for living in the metacrisis

I think ours is a moment to be bolder in exploring what ecofeminist-related philosophies could help us to see and imagine during the myriad disruptions and breakdowns ahead. Could we better respect, revere, and remunerate, the roles of caring, of nurturing in the home, of dialoguing in our neighbourhoods, and of stewarding the commons? Could we escape, through serious economic redesign, the requirement of transactional value for so much of the paid labour in our societies? Could we have confidently relaxed attitudes about gender identities so that no one feels compelled to fit into a simple binary, whether by behaviour or biological modification? Could we develop healthy masculine identities, rather than merely complain or resist the toxic forms, or swap out more men for women in senior roles? Could we even identify what we like from within the system of patriarchy, if separated from its ills?

Speaking of a bolder agenda for ecofeminism in this age of consequences, one of the founder members of Extinction Rebellion, Skeena Rathor, mentioned to me the idea of ‘rematriation’. The concept arises from the insights and demands of Indigenous women leaders, as they seek to defend or regain stewardship of their lands and space for their cultures. Some think it could become a broader agenda for modern cultures that have lost their connection to the landscapes that hold them and nourish them today. I am hopeful that by introducing ‘Regeneration’ as a 6th R into the Deep Adaptation framework for reflection and dialogue, I am better recognising the way many people are acting on their collapse awareness. I hear that they are nurturing life in various ways, through their love of life rather than belief in a theory of what might ‘save the world’. I am happy to be asking myself and others: how are we nurturing life?

What the Indigenous elders who Skeena is working with are pointing to is a deeper spiritual subjugation that has been occurring through patriarchal cultures. Over millennia, religious institutions increasingly regarded the living world as less intrinsically valuable than a separate divine entity or realm, which humans could seek to ascend to or reunite with. This deep and subtle alienation with the natural world around us, and not experiencing our own bodies as part of that wondrous nature, is a core revelation from Indigenous teachings. But it is also one revealed in some of the ancient religious texts that were rejected by the Roman Empire when codifying Christian belief. One such text, The Gospel of Mary, spoke about a spirituality centred on inner awakening, unity, and direct experience of the divine. Salvation is not achieved through external authority, doctrine, or hierarchy, but through awakening the divine presence inside oneself. A key theme is the “sacred interbeing” of all existence: all life exists “in and with each other,” reflecting a holistic, relational cosmos where divinity permeates everything. The text shows that in the earliest years of Jesus-followership, Mary Magdalene was regarded as a spiritual authority who embodied intuitive, experiential wisdom rather than institutional power. Excluding her teachings, and, later, even speculating she was a prostitute, reflects the wider pattern of religious institutions suppressing mystical experience and female authority in favour of male-dominated hierarchies.  

I was so pleased to read about her ideas that I wrote and performed the Mariam Mantra. But in the process of discussing the teachings of Mary, and discovering the sub-cultures associated with her, I noticed that patriarchal habits are hard to kick, even amongst those who see themselves as liberating the feminine. For instance, there is a widespread sexualising of Mary Magdalene, where she is portrayed as both sensual and as relevant to us because of her intimacy with Jesus. But if we drop patriarchal assumptions that centre men in our understanding of the world, we can be open to possibilities such as whether she might have been a key teacher of Jesus, or that she might not have desired him intimately. Yes, even Christ could learn from someone; and not be sexually appealing to every woman! Such speculations are just as likely as any, once we drop patriarchal assumptions. And the fact they might jar with some people reflects the power of those assumptions. Without them, questions of whether they were intimate or married become very secondary. 

Ecofeminist ideas can also help us to imagine and inhabit healthy masculinities within the metacrisis. To begin with, men can simply respect and value women more, as well as the qualities that have been categorised in our societies as feminine. However, a healthy masculinity can be more than that. It can retain and repurpose what we culturally associate with masculinity. What is true strength? True protection? True courage? True rationality? True merit? True authority? In a culture that learns from its mistakes, all of those qualities can be reconceived and reborn for everyone, without ‘essentialising’ them as only masculine. That would be smarter than the ideas coming from traffic-hungry pundits speaking to the economically and socially disadvantaged men in late capitalist societies. I am pleased to see a few initiatives explicitly working on this opportunity (such as Starfish Collective). Many men’s support groups embody similar thinking, even if not explicitly recognising feminist critique as having contributed to the building blocks of their approaches. 

Beware the close enemies of ecofeminism

Loads of people talk about feminism and women’s leadership in relation to social and environmental problems. But that doesn’t mean they are not reproducing patriarchy and accidentally oppressing others, and aspects of themselves. Therefore, I can’t finish this essay on ecofeminism in the metacrisis without mentioning the ideas and behaviours which I have witnessed and consider to be the ‘near enemies’ of true feminism. 

First, there is the patriarchal women-washing of dominant organisations and systems. Being a female leader doesn’t necessarily involve the person behaving differently to the role as it has been defined by society before them. Instead, we all know many female executives and politicians who appear to be copies of their male predecessors, whether in terms of their rhetoric or decisions. To avoid any doubt, we could label this with the rather oxymoronic term: patriarchal feminism. It is a superficial feminism, often counter productive, that does little to challenge the masculine-coded values that are considered superior in patriarchy, such as competition, forcefulness, transactionalism, reductive rationality, emotional suppression, hierarchy, and the domination of nature. Instead, it enables a select group of women to participate in wielding power within existing systems and cultures, and to strive for that power in ways that disrespect (or even damage) people in its pursuit.  

Second, and related to patriarchal feminism, is when women leaders use deep patriarchal tropes to discipline our dialogue and behaviour. Eternal optimism, for instance, can be regarded as a form of emotional suppression that then invites a level of acquiescence to power. Some of the most senior women in climate science and climate politics have, for years, exhorted us to be stubbornly optimistic. Sometimes that can involve censorship. For instance, there was a period when my XR launch speech was taken offline, due to a woman executive deciding they shouldn’t platform anything so negative. The Deep Adaptation videos only survived due to the founder Stuart H. Scott pushing back (despite being preoccupied with terminal cancer at the time). It led to a split in the organisation, and the birth of Facing Future TV. 

When critics of ‘collapsology’ imply, or directly claim, that it is harmful or morally deficient not to be optimistic, they are expressing the patriarchal trope of shame. It is true that the concept of shame exists across most, if not all, cultures, but is a particularly powerful means of social control in patriarchal societies. Therefore, a third expression of patriarchal feminism is the use of shame in public discourse. In particular, I have noticed the use of apparently feminist concerns to invite shame upon people that some women leaders disagree with. In my case, a number of senior women, with higher academic rank than myself, used my maleness and age as a basis to frame my response to inaccurate criticisms of my work and character as evidence of my patriarchal attitudes. That was at a time when the backlash against Deep Adaptation from the mainstream environmental professions, and the nuclear industry, had begun. The aim of some of the criticism was to encourage people to feel principled in hostility towards my character, and thereby dismiss the veracity of my analysis of the environmental predicament, as well as anyone who might agree. 

Once again I noticed the patriarchal preoccupation with opportunities for shaming when a newspaper missed what was rare in the story of my interaction with Jeffrey Epstein. I never met him in person, and he didn’t fund my work, but we had phone calls and correspondence. To make amends for the limited interaction I had with him, I spoke about it publicly in 2023. I believed the survivors deserved more attention to his crimes, and that people like me, and the people who introduced us, needed to re-assess why we didn’t take these issues more seriously in the past. It was the launch of my book Breaking Together, and I explained I had learned to have less deference to power and money, and work instead at the grassroots. Nearly three years after that speech, with the release of my emails with Epstein, a local journalist reported on the matter as if I had spoken in response to forced disclosure. That meant some readers would interpret the story as being one of scandal and shame, rather than about someone having pushed for attention to the case and expressing contrition as they shared what they learned. If we can’t welcome people being open about their past limitations in not always quickly or fully standing up for what is right, then we aren’t helping a shift in culture. It would be wrong to assume that any coverage of this topic is pro-feminist. Instead, the survivors want attention to the aims and resources of the networks of power that produced the criminal behaviour by, and associated with, Epstein — and then covered it up. When coverage falls short of that, it could be part of the effort to avoid deeper accountability and change. 

On the one hand, the idea that a guy has no legitimacy or contribution to make in talking about feminist issues, including some criticism of some women’s views and actions on these issues, is prejudiced and counterproductive. On the other hand, it is also true that men like me need to accept there will always be some criticism for sharing our views on these matters, and that some of it might seem unfair and arising from unresolved trauma. I have experienced that a few times in my life, and it was painful to be subjected to anger and condemnation. My initial reaction was to try to understand better and explain myself more fully. With time, I realised that if expressing themselves from a traumatic wound, there is little opportunity for understanding. We men weren’t harmed in the same ways by patriarchy, and we benefited in so many ways (that only ignorant males refuse to see). So sometimes our best contribution is to find the strength not to react. That doesn’t mean always ‘holding space’ for, what might be, trauma-driven responses. Sometimes, it can mean not responding at all. If we have been fortunate and strategic enough to surround ourselves with wise women, then they will be better suited to respond. 

Sources of inspiration and what to support

I am grateful for the way the co-founders of Extinction Rebellion welcomed my work and invited my contribution to their early work. Over the years, I have kept in touch with the three women at the heart of its launch: Clare Farrell, Skeena Rathor and Gail Bradbrook. Each of them have continued to lead, beyond XR, in ways that reflect some of the many dimensions of women’s leadership in the metacrisis. 

Clare Farrell is convening the Humanity Project UK, which is supporting the development of grassroots ‘assembly culture’ towards an agenda for self rule. She is also director for Absurd Intelligence, which she describes as “a thinktank for the shit show”. More recently, Clare has been seeking out the wisdom of those who specialise in spiritual life, to gain insight on “strategies of constructive resistance whilst we hurtle into breakdown” (sharing some on her Substack). Skeena Rathor has become an ‘Elder Guardian’ of a Global Movement on Indigenous Commons. They support efforts at repairing and restoring the world’s water flows, from rivers to oceans and atmospheric processes, which also include large forests. She also focuses on ways that capital flows can be redirected to repair life on Earth. Gail Bradbrook has been developing the model for community resilience in the context of system breakdown, and trialling it in her hometown of Stroud, with the moniker ‘lifehouse’. While continuing to regard reductions in carbon emissions as important, each of them has moved beyond that to work on community resilience and regeneration. Their practical and collaborative responses to “the shit show” echo the leadership in the new “women in the storm” film.

Want to discuss this?

In the next salon of the Metacrisis Initiative we will discuss women’s leadership and ecofeminism in the metacrisis. Skeena Rathor will join us. If you are a member of the initiative, look out for registration information in your inbox in a few days. Meanwhile, as members, you can share your reflections in our community chat on Telegram (if you aren’t part of that, also look out for the reminder in a few days). See you there! Warmly, Jem

The Deep Adaptation Framework: the complete version

jembendell

“Has the collapse begun?”

“What is your revised schedule for societal collapse?”

I’ve been receiving these kinds of messages in my inboxes over the last 6 weeks, since the wider impact of the US-Israeli assault on Iran began to unfold. These haven’t been queries from top officials or mainstream journalists, who we might expect to reach out to ‘collapsologists’ for advice on deeper approaches to the field of ‘contingency planning’. Instead, I’m being asked by podcasters and people who follow my blog. So what do I reply?

I’ve often said that a rising cost of living is the obvious way that most people will experience the creeping collapse of industrial consumer societies. In the decade prior to 2026, that was already happening due to market capture by monopolistic capital, corrupt monetary policies, and the damage to production from ecological depletion and climate destabilisation. Now it’s also happening due to avoidable conflicts, such as in Ukraine and the Gulf. That is not to downplay any one tragic situation; but by pointing to the rising prices which then necessitate a change in our living standards, emotional states, and life goals, I am trying to help more of us to see how collapse is not a sudden event in the future. As detailed in Breaking Together, societal collapse is not defined by pace: it is defined by the fact that declines and breakdowns are irrecoverable, so a previous state cannot be returned to. At some moments, and in some places,  there may be a lurch forward, or then an easing, within the broader trajectory of decline. For instance, according to the Human Development Index, a very slight reversal in the decline in some indicators occurred over the last two years in much of Africa and Latin America. However, a downward trend line is likely to occur there, as elsewhere, as the knock-on impacts from energy and fertiliser availability sadly combine with temperatures unprecedented in human history, later this year. 

Over time, I have realised that if we wrongly imagine all collapse as a sudden event, it is not only intensifying our attention — it can make some of us postpone action, if we imagine it as a spectre occurring at some point in the future. Although we are in the midst of a global collapse of a way of life — which the global data indicated started sometime around 2015 — it may take a long time to unfold. That means we need to get on with our lives rather than just be frozen, angry, or entertained, in front of our screens. That is one reason why I am using the term ‘metacrisis’ in my work, to describe intersecting crises that relate to a deeper crisis that cannot be fixed. I am pleased that the Metacrisis Initiative is developing to help people explore how to live well and usefully in this context, through our monthly salons, peer mentoring and community chat. 

The need for more of us to explore positive responses to metacrisis and collapse is also why I am pleased to see some of the leading podcasters on these matters, such as Nate Hagens, turn to discuss what we do about it. Many of the suggestions from people in this field are similarly focused on how to live well and usefully, rather than become bewildered, paralysed, defensive or aggressive. That was the intention behind me proposing the initial Deep Adaptation framework, nearly 10 years ago. Some advice, such as that in Dark Mountain co-founder Dougald Hine’s last book, clearly mirrors that early Deep Adaptation framework. 

With the addition of the 5th and 6th questions to the Deep Adaptation framework, I think the framework will more effectively incorporate all the types of personal reflections and community conversations that people are having as they become collapse aware. These new Rs invite more attention to community-wide social action to increase possibilities within collapsing systems. They neither require nor invite denial of our predicament, but broaden how we find paths for our own positive action within a metacrisis and collapse. They are particularly relevant to how I have heard younger generations discussing potential responses to the situation. 

1. Resilience

What do we VALUE MOST that we want to keep, and how?

2. Relinquishment

What do we need to LET GO of, so as not to make matters worse?

3. Restoration

What could we BRING BACK to help us as difficult situations unfold?

4. Reconciliation

With whom and with what could I MAKE PEACE with to lessen suffering?

5. Reclamation

What in our lives, communities, economies and nature can we TAKE BACK from dominant systems and beliefs?

6. Regeneration

What or whom can we NURTURE due to our love of Life? 

I wrote about the 5th R of Reclamation in the book Breaking Together, and the 6th R in an essay on Regenerativity. For a fuller summary of the first 5 Rs, I recommend my previous essay on the framework.  

A number of people who find the Deep Adaptation framework useful for their work have proposed new Rs and I presume more might be suggested in future. I’m happy to see the framework being used and adapted for positive purposes. However, I have defined the 3 additional Rs for the same reason I first outlined in the original Deep Adaptation framework. That is, I wish to encourage the type of reflections and conversations that aren’t that normal within either a progressivist culture and mindset, or a defeatist one. For that purpose, I now consider them a complete set, so won’t be proposing any more. 

As the origin of this framework is within environmental awareness and concern, I have chosen to represent the 6Rs of Deep Adaptation with a widely recognisable symbol of life, which reminds me of some shells on the beach as I was thinking about these ideas. 

I know that some people who appreciate the DA framing, and associated communities, can be hesitant to move beyond a focus on emotional coping of people in general, the collapse-aware in particular, or just themselves and their acquaintances. But if we want to embody and enable loving responses to our predicament, we can value our persistent desire to serve Life over our wish to avoid personal anxiety. We can also honour the fact that different generations have different emphases on how to become more collapse ready. Each of us will gain more from different questions in the DA framework at different times, and that is fine: as we don’t have a blueprint for how to live in a world where so much of what we knew to be real and true is now fracturing. 

It was with this understanding that we can all benefit from moments of challenge or reassurance, striving or allowing, that I produced the Oracle Cards for challenging times.

Please share this updated framework within any Deep Adaptation groups and initiatives you are part of. If you can edit the Wikipedia page on Deep Adaptation, I’d welcome it being updating with this complete model of the framework. And if you know how to make videos: please do one on the framework… it seems it is how most people receive their information these days 🙂 Thx, Jem

The Dangerous Honesty we Can No Longer Avoid – by John Foster

jembendell

Guest article by John Foster, University of Lancaster, UK, and author of After Sustainability.

Note from Jem: In previous essays, I have criticized what I regard as the authoritarian sentiments and imaginations of some environmentalists. I have articulated an approach that focuses on freeing us from the manipulative and exploitative systems that accelerate environmental destruction. British Academic John Foster is one intellectual who I have debated on these topics. He penned a reply to my recent essay, and I am sharing it here to encourage dialogue about the future of environmental politics in a fracturing world. Over to John…

—

There is a peculiar challenge in debating how a society should prepare for its own possible collapse. The usual rules of political argument – the cut and thrust, the simplification of an opponent’s position into a convenient label – begin to feel not just unhelpful but actively dishonest. When the stakes are this high, the window for meaningful action this narrow, and the situation so unprecedented, we owe each other something more than polemic. We need to accept that we can’t know what might work to reduce harm and give future generations of humans, and other species, a better chance. 

Continue reading “The Dangerous Honesty we Can No Longer Avoid – by John Foster” →

Let’s Look Down: Dining for the Chance of Resilient Communities

jembendell1 Comment

This is a guest article from Tyler Sycamore Hess, the Ceremonial Chef. 

“We really did have everything, didn’t we?” says Leonardo DiCaprio’s character during the final scene of “Don’t Look Up.” There is a small group engaging in an elegant last supper, while the extinction-causing comet hurtles toward Earth. The table is beautifully set. The wine is poured. They feel gratitude and camaraderie, at the end of the world. 

But what if we could feel such emotions at dinners that create new worlds, not just lament the passing of the old? 

My mission as a chef and educator is to craft dinner experiences that begin from that premise, that we can create a better future through intimate relationship with our local ecology and food system. We don’t only ask each other to “look up” at graphs and headlines about growing threats to our way of life. We invite people to look down: at the soil under our feet, the water moving through our watershed, and the hands that plant, harvest, mill, and butcher in our local communities.

Continue reading “Let’s Look Down: Dining for the Chance of Resilient Communities” →

Mentoring in the Metacrisis -evolving coaching and mentoring in a fracturing world

jembendell1 Comment

“If the world is falling apart, and along with it our careers, why do we need coaches and mentors? If we dropped the idea of self-improvement we could save ourselves some time, stress and money! Isn’t it time we threw coaching, mentoring, and all that ‘leadership development’ stuff, into the bin of ‘what we did when we had a future and some budgets to play with’?”

As someone who quit being a director of a University institute working in leadership development, to become a ‘doomster’ who now experiments with farming and music, you might think I reached that type of nihilistic conclusion about professional development, and even personal development. But I didn’t. Instead, my collapse-awareness opened me up to new questions and interests, with some of that being being helped by coaches and mentors, both hired and informal. I feel like I have been ‘growing’ more since my collapse awareness. Yet there is a problem: I hear from professionals in the coaching space that collapse-awareness is still a niche view, with the mainstream behaving as if there is a future of shiny happy coaches holding hands with abundant clients. So in this essay I am sharing what I think about how coaching and mentoring can evolve during the metacrisis, and how we are approaching that in the Metacrisis Initiative.

In case you didn’t know, recent decades have seen professional coaching grow from a niche practice into a substantial global industry. Organisations such as the ICF, AC, EMCC, and EASC, have helped develop standards, competencies, and ethical frameworks to provide coaching and coaches more credibility in professional settings. Relatedly, a different stream of ‘life coaching’ has flourished in the field of personal development, often influenced by concepts that emphasise the power of intention in shaping our experience of life. Both of these strands have offered something valuable. I have seen how professional coaching has helped many of my friends in senior management, from business to the United Nations, to navigate their career and leadership challenges. I also witnessed how manifestation-oriented life coaching encouraged other friends, often self-employed, to recognise the role that mindset and attention play in shaping our experience. Receiving that latter mode of coaching in 2018 and 2019, helped me to respond to the explosion of attention to my work on the climate crisis at the time. Looking back, I think it gave me more confidence to speak from my heart and to focus on the new initiatives which I regarded as important at the time (the Deep Adaptation Forum and Extinction Rebellion). 

Despite these upsides, I have always had a nagging feeling that those coaching approaches have some fundamental limitations. That nagging feeling grew as I talked with members of the psychotherapy profession on how they respond to emotions related to climate change. In 2019, I delivered a talk at a conference of counsellors and psychotherapists (the UKCP). I discovered that many therapists were receiving many clients who expressed fear and sadness about the climate situation, and were also feeling difficult emotions themselves. They explained how they did not feel it authentic to suggest to their clients that the threats could be managed and disasters averted. Since then, there has been a lot of work done in the field of climate psychology, although its penetration into wider counselling and psychotherapy is limited, and the influence of traditional concepts seems unhelpful (as discussed in a previous essay). In the related fields of professional coaching and life coaching, I have heard of some similar disquiet, and engaged in some coach-led climate-aware initiatives that exist to evolve principles and practices. However, looking at mainstream coaching and leadership development today, I do not see that much has changed.

After looking closer at mainstream coaching practices, and the critiques that others have made, I now conclude that such practices often mobilise underlying assumptions which limit their ability to fully meet the needs of the present moment. Those assumptions include the societal context of coaching, the personal purpose of coaching, and the commercial interest of providers. In this essay, I will explore the problems with such assumptions, and how coaching and mentoring must not overlook — instead, sometimes foreground — the profound social, ecological, and existential questions that are now pressing for so many of, whatever our professional situation. Drawing on insights from critical coaching, group practices, and the need for ‘critical wisdom’, I will explain why we are offering a new kind of peer mentoring within the Metacrisis Initiative. We use the term ‘metacrisis’ to refer to how many of today’s challenges and predicaments – ecological, social, economic, and cultural – are interwoven rather than separate, often with common causes, which destabilise our identities and worldviews, sometimes leading to maladaptive responses, but which also offer the potential for personal and collective transformation. Therefore, the evolving practice that I will outline below as ‘metacritical mentoring’ is designed to help participants help each other to live meaningfully and kindly in a fracturing world.

Limitations of some mainstream coaching

Around us we see that social and political tensions are rising, ecological stresses are intensifying, so that long-standing expectations of stability or progress now seem like old fantasies. That context means many of us are not simply seeking better performance, clearer goals, or more positive energy. Increasingly, we are questioning the direction of our work and lives altogether. Even our identities. For many of us, the questions becoming more pressing are not “How can I optimise my life?” but rather “What is mine to do in a troubled world?” and “How can I remain kind and curious when times are tough and the future feels uncertain?” If the context of professional coaching is assumed to be a stable society and the potential for a viable career, the extent to which such questions can be explored in a coaching context will be limited. That’s why something new is called for… 

For 11 years as a full professor in the field of leadership development, I was interested in ‘critical leadership studies’, which enhanced my recognition of how power dynamics shape what we might consider to be positive behaviours in organisations. Such analysis is also relevant to coaching, with some practitioners describing themselves as involved in ‘critical coaching’ where the social, political, and economic forces shaping both clients’ lives and the coaching industry itself are foregrounded. Here ‘critical’ means systematically unpacking how ideas, methods, and norms in coaching are produced, legitimised, and promoted within particular power dynamics — and how they often reproduce power structures. Working from that perspective, mainstream coaching can be regarded as reinforcing neoliberal assumptions that personal success depends solely on individual effort, while ignoring structural inequalities such as gender, class, or race. One implication of such insight is to  explore how these activities can enable collective empowerment rather than only self-improvement. Another implication is to give attention to how to democratise access to coaching knowledge — a topic I will return to in a moment. 

Given the rapid changes in the world, these ideas from critical coaching are increasingly relevant. At a minimum, to stay relevant in a ‘metacrisis’, professional coaching and mentoring will need to respond to the changes in societal conditions rather than assume the relatively stable contexts in which many coaching models were originally developed. Once recognising such instability and disruption, the question of why that is happening must be part of the conversation. With that in mind, the normal emphasis on a coach’s apparent values-neutrality and client-centred orientation, could come to be regarded as avoiding a complex reality. That existing emphasis can arise from an earnest principle of not bringing a coaches’ values into the client relationship. But one can argue that is not possible, and so it is better to be transparent about values and views, and how they will be part of the coaching process, while avoiding attempts to inculcate values in a client. Clearly this issue is a delicate one to navigate well, and it might be easier, economically and psychologically, for some coaches to avoid it. Since 2021, the Global Code of Ethics on coaching and mentoring recognises the importance of any professional coach staying abreast of “societal or environmental needs,” but doesn’t require more than some attention to stakeholders’ interests when they begin a client relationship. Instead, best practice could be regarded as foregrounding values and views, within the context of a professional commitment of a coach to be curious rather than evangelising about a particular view. The experiences of some in the counselling and psychotherapy professions could be relevant here, as therapists aware of our environmental predicament have been supporting each other with their own emotional wellbeing, as well as how to navigate the tricky issue of hosting related conversations with clients (e.g. see the CPA). Professional coaches who are concerned about climate change are also grappling with these issues, including professionals within the CCA and the new Sustainability Coaching Coalition. In time, these initiatives will hopefully influence the wider field of coaching and mentoring, rather than being an interest group that is relevant to a subset of practitioners.

Some people think that the less career-focused coaching practices are more likely to help us in a changing world. In some cases, perhaps. But in my experience, manifestation-oriented life coaching encourages the people being coached to shift their attention away from difficult emotional states toward more generative energies. That can be transformative for people who have felt stuck with a preponderance of difficult emotions or self-limiting beliefs. However, if we are experiencing grief about ecological loss, anxiety about social instability, dread about inevitable future difficulties, and moral confusion about our roles within systems that appear to be breaking down, any emphasis on ‘energetic tuning’ can seem delusional — at least initially. Skillfully held, in my experience, a manifestation approach can help people without denying the severity of the situation, so that positivity need not be mutually exclusive with grief or concern. However, it is not uncommon for a life coach within this paradigm to explain their belief that there is metaphysical power involved in one having a positive outlook on one’s relationship with the world, and that the evidence of that will be in both material success and experiencing more ‘positive’ emotions. An implication of such a view is either that the wider world is not important, or, it can magically improve by focusing on one’s personal energetic tuning. Yet poverty, war, and environmental damage do not disappear by ignoring them. Neither are they definitely ameliorated by us focusing on them. Nevertheless, being curious about all that is happening in the world, and wanting to be less harmful and more useful, is widely recognised as a natural state for us humans, and we can welcome that not only according to specific values, but because it provides the possibility for collective action that might be of wider benefit. 

In future, manifestation-focused life coaching could increasingly fail to provide a deeper source of emotional resilience in challenging times. That is, unless it integrates attention to and acceptance of such difficulties in the world, and how that impinges on each of us. For those coaches who are emotionally resourced to explore that approach, perhaps even accepting we live in a time of metacrisis and collapse, then there is an important and growing role to play. My view is that insights from more contemplative and mystical understandings of the human condition are essential for such an evolution of life coaching.  

We should also recognise that most of the public will never encounter coaching directly. They are navigating tough questions in an unstable world in their communities, families, workplaces, religious institutions. Some people join initiatives such as men’s groups and joint 12-step programmes, which explicitly offer forms of peer mentoring, where we both support and gain support from fellow participants rather than trained professionals. On the one hand, the professionalisation of coaching has codified approaches, improved standards, and added safeguards, in ways that made it more possible for organisations to fund their staff to access it. On the other hand, that has aided the commodification and commercialisation of the practice in ways that may have made it more expensive and thus distant from the wider public. That presents an issue which the psychotherapy profession has already acknowledged: the wellbeing of a population depends on how societies support each other before they seek professional help. Those of us interested in the contribution of coaching and mentoring to society can therefore ask: how might we open up access while enabling the quality of what is experienced? That is why methods for ‘peer mentoring’ in society come into focus. 

The paradox of process in support groups

Over the years I have experienced, and also facilitated, group processes which seek to help participants in ways that offer some of the benefits of coaching without the limitations I’ve just described. Many of the people listed in the ‘deep adaptation guidance database’ have learned how to offer something more relevant for today. Yes, even the ones who came from manifestation life coaching traditions! One modality that Katie Carr and I dubbed ‘deep relating,’ helps us break out of habituated patterns of superficial communication. But what I’ve begun to wonder is whether a simpler-yet-comprehensive model for peer mentoring in small groups would be useful. And that is the origin of a new peer mentoring programme within the Metacrisis Initiative, for which this essay is background reading.  

I mentioned earlier that peer mentoring is a developmental relationship in which individuals regard themselves as having similar status and role to support each other’s reflection, problem-solving and deeper learning — typically through semi-structured dialogue. Also dubbed ‘co-mentoring’, it is where each participant alternately receives perspective, feedback, accountability, and emotional support, as well as offering that to others when invited to do so. In my experience of such processes, I discovered a paradox. On the one hand, participants benefit from a basic structure for how to be in a circle together — virtual or real — and from a menu of process tools to call upon when someone in the group chooses that. Otherwise, groups can repeat the patterns of superficial conversation and biased representations as we experience in normal life. However, on the other hand, an attachment to rules and the use of process tools, can displace the intention of being together and hide, or smother, the humanness of each participant. What I loved about the men’s group I was part of, is that we came together to support ourselves and each other with open hearts. When it fell apart, for me and some others, was when people wanted to ‘do the work’ with process tools, with little interest in the other men, or in being fully seen. I realised that our ‘heartfulness’ is what made the group so valuable, and it is what has drawn me to the guidance of Reverend Wright on ways to cultivate that. 

This experience also brought me to an awareness that is not just ‘critical’ of attachment to specific processes and methods, but ‘metacritical’, where all models and explanations, as well as critiques of them, can be unpacked for what they do or don’t help us to see, be, and do, rather than some being ultimate truths. This reflects a deeper understanding of the ‘criticality’ I mentioned above, which recognises that any of our concepts and models are ‘social constructions’ which can point in the direction of truth but not precisely represent such truth. As Lao Tsu wrote, millenia ago, “the truth that can be told, is not the eternal truth.” That is really important to keep in mind when considering participating in coaching or mentoring during these times, where existential questions about the nature and meaning of life are naturally arising. Unless we are metacritical in our view, we might open the door to a procession of religious leaders and alternative spiritual gurus, each asking us to uncritically accept their stories of everything seen and unseen. 

In my book Breaking Together, I explained that when our assumptions about life, society, and the future are fractured, we can feel bewildered and become vulnerable to manipulation, whether from authorities or opportunists. Therefore, I argued how important it is to cultivate our ability to continually investigate the nature of truth, without craving for emotional security or escape. I termed that ‘critical wisdom’, which involves four capabilities. Logical reasoning remains incredibly important to test any ideas we are told and reduce the various biases that are mobilised in public communication today. The ability to recognise assumptions and views embedded in the terms and symbols we experience in society, and how they enact and enforce power relations, is also essential (something termed ‘critical literacy’). Mindfulness, where we can better witness our thoughts and associated emotions, rather than be defined and driven by them, remains key to avoiding delusion. Such mindfulness can also enable our ability to allow our unconscious mind to rise into our consciousness and be assessed, which is another way of thinking about our ‘intuition’. Perhaps what we call ‘intuition,’ is also our capacity to listen to what might be communicated by the aspect of our consciousness that is connected to the universal and eternal nature of reality. The loving quality of that communication is why Reverend Wright describes it as ‘heartfulness’, and his guidance on cultivating that quality in us has been influencing my development of practices for peer mentoring.  

Metacritical Mentoring

The ideas I have explained thus far have led me to experiment with a different approach with the people who joined the Metacrisis Initiative. By naming this ‘Metacritical Mentoring’, I am pointing to the need for ‘critical wisdom’ in a metacrisis, including our constructive and open-ended questioning of concepts, methods and contexts, as we centre our aims of connection, curiosity and kindness. We are trialling the approach in small online groups composed of people who aim to live and act well within the metacrisis — to be ‘heartful’ in our responses to these times. We will draw practices from peer-to-peer coaching, co-mentoring, dialogue practices, and community learning, while avoiding some of the assumptions embedded in existing traditions, and to give space to the existential questions that arise from a recognition of metacrisis and collapse. 

Six working principles will guide the approach of Metacritical Mentoring:

First, we do not focus merely on individual self-actualisation and success, but invite each other to experience ourselves as curious and kind participants in processes of collective liberation and reconnection. 

Second, we do not assume stable and progressing contexts, but recognise that many of us think that we are living through volatile and uncertain conditions, and therefore we seek to support reflection and adaptation within that reality.

Third, we do not frame difficult emotions as obstacles to vitality. Instead, grief, fear, anger, dread, and confusion are welcomed as understandable responses to what we perceive around us, and can be sources of insight and solidarity if we help each other towards that.

Fourth, we do not restrict ourselves to specific frameworks of co-mentoring. Instead, we use them as tools which we can benefit from, while also benefitting from critiques of such tools, as part of cultivating our ‘critical wisdom’ and our foregrounding of ‘heartfulness’ in our interactions.

Fifth, we do not assume any mentor’s or facilitator’s neutrality, but recognise the assumptions, beliefs, and values, of all co-mentoring participants, are involved in the process and can be usefully explored without craving correctness or avoiding shame. 

Finally, we do not treat the capacity to support others as a scarce professional skill, but share practices and facilitation approaches so that participants can support one another and seed similar activities elsewhere. Therefore, we will continue to ask ourselves how we might bring what we benefit to others with less privilege or opportunity.

These ideas are still evolving, and the groups themselves are modest experiments rather than a finished methodology. By attempting to meet the need for forms of accompaniment on how to live meaningfully in a metacrisis, we will learn something useful as we go. 

For those of you involved in coaching and mentoring, this may be an interesting moment to ask: what kinds of conversations does our time now require, and how might our practices evolve to hold them? For more and more people? 

You are also welcome to join the Metacrisis Initiative. If you are a young professional from the Majority World, you can apply to join for free. 

❤ Jem

Reflection Exercise:

Remember a time when you received support from someone (or group) that changed your life for the better over the mid-to-long term. It might have been one conversation, or a series of conversations, or a tangible action rather than conversation. Recall the situation you were in, materially and emotionally, what the person(s) did, what was it about you and/or their input which helped it reach you, and how you changed as a result. Write down all of these aspects. Then write one sentence which summarises what it was about the person(s) and the interaction that helped you. 

PS: If you would like a definition…

The practice of peer mentoring in the metacrisis might not need a new term to describe it, especially if it doesn’t grow beyond our initial pilot this year. But just in case… 

Metacritical Mentoring is the name given to a peer mentoring approach, where non-experts both receive and offer support, to help them live more consciously and positively during the metacrisis of environmental, societal and personal circumstances. The approach deploys a deeper understanding of ‘critical thinking’ as involving the consideration of the benefits and limitations of any concepts, how they shape our attention, how they are produced by and re-produce power dynamics, while also reflexively considering how those insights also apply to any critiques. Six initial principles, published in March 2026, provide an initial philosophy, which attempt to differentiate the practice from popular forms of coaching and mentoring at the time.

In memory of Martin Caine: who brought into men’s groups his heart, humility, presence, warmth, and joy of being in the company of others, whom he saw as chosen brothers.

My thanks to Josie McLean for comments on an earlier version of this essay. As a member of the Metacrisis Initiative you can share thoughts on this essay and related ideas with us and others.

PREVIOUS WRITINGS ON PROFESSIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF COLLAPSE AWARENESS

Keeping your job at the end of the world (as we know it)

The Professional Implications of Collapse: Deep Adaptation in Organizations

Join the Metacrisis Initiative

If a member, then you can see the meetings and decide if you want to join either the salons, the peer mentoring, or both. As a member you can also discuss the issues in this essay in the community chat.

Subscribe

Why Regenerativity Matters to a Changing Climate, and Beyond

jembendell

Visiting the Green School in Bali in 2018 was a revelation for me. I met students who were bravely facing the troubling science on how badly we modern humans have damaged the biosphere and climate. I explained the bad news about what that probably means for the future of our societies, and witnessed them discussing how they might integrate that into their future plans. I was so impressed with the way they engaged the topic, I made a film about them! Seven years on, I went back to the school, to share some lessons from my regenerative farm and training centre in Bali. I discovered the Green School staff have evolved their understanding of ‘green’ to embrace “regenerativity’ as their mission. Discussing with parents, I realised that this aspiration to pursue ‘regenerativity’ could give new impetus for action on our changing climate, including both attempts to reduce its pace and negative impacts, as well as reshape how we live well in an era of disruption and collapse. However, I also heard one teacher who seemed to use the term more as a nod to environmental care without admitting the pain of failure that is now associated with the concept of ‘sustainability’. Coming away from the School, I took time to consider what the concept of regeneration might add to a realistic agenda on the metacrisis of economic, social, ecological and political disruption that is unfolding around us. That got me asking the question: who or what can I nurture due to my love of Life? After decades of working on sustainability, from the highest levels of the UN to the grassroots of a farm, this felt like a moment for evolving my focus, and so I’ve written this essay to share about it. 

In the following lines, I am going to explore the potential and the pitfalls of the regenerative agenda as a response to our unfolding metacrisis. On climate, it is important to recognise that regenerating key living systems is not just an adjunct to emissions reduction but should be a core part of our climate response. It is also important to see that for the concept of regeneration to be meaningful beyond our climate predicament, we must acknowledge the profound failures — scientific, economic, political, and cultural — that have led us to this point. After discussing those, I will share some thoughts on how the term ‘regenerativity’ might be used authentically to convene genuine action, or misused to obscure the same failed ideas. I’ll explain how I’ve concluded the concept can offer a deeply personal and practical signpost for living with love and purpose in an era of metacrisis and collapse. It’s why I’ll conclude this essay by proposing ‘regeneration’ as a 6th R within the Deep Adaptation framework. 

Panecological climatology

For decades, climate action has been a story of subtraction. The central metric has been carbon and our primary goal has been emissions reduction. This narrow calculus, while critical, is proving insufficient. Not only are most economies remaining carbon heavy, the agenda has been framed as limiting damage from one factor, carbon emissions. Instead, both recent climate observations, and growing bodies of research, point to the role of large forests and healthy oceans in modulating the world’s climate through seeding clouds which reflect the sun’s rays. If that is new to you, please check my essay on the topic, or the work of Dr Anna Makarieva. The findings of such research tell us that attempts to regenerate the planet’s living systems from a degraded state should be more central to climate action in future. The principle, capability and agenda known as ‘regenerativity’ could encapsulate that planetary imperative, if it is conceptualised honestly, and in light of the failures of our past attempts at sustainability. Moreover, efforts to regenerate both degraded ecosystems and human cultures offer pathways for attempting to adapt to inevitable disruptions from our changing climate – the situation many now term the ‘metacrisis’. 

The conventional carbon-centric view is missing the forest for the trees, quite literally. It treats the climate as a simple atmospheric chemistry problem. Yet, as emerging ‘panecological’ analysis emphasises, Earth’s thermostat is affected by humans not just by our greenhouse gas emissions, but by our impacts on the dynamics of major ecosystems — particularly vast forests and healthy oceans. These are not passive carbon sinks but active climate modulators. The great boreal and tropical forests, for instance, do more than store carbon. Through the release of bacteria and pollen, they seed clouds that directly cool their regions, and beyond, by reflecting solar radiation. There is evidence that the condensation processes also draw in air from the oceans, creating a ‘biotic pump’ that affects the Earth’s energy balance. Similarly, a thriving ocean teeming with the right kinds of phytoplankton doesn’t merely absorb CO₂ as it is the source of over half the world’s cloud-condensation nuclei, via the production of dimethyl sulfide. The functioning of these systems directly shapes planetary albedo, or reflectivity, and thus temperatures around the world.  

A regenerative agenda could respond to this profound interdependence. That is because it brings our attention to restoring, renewing, and revitalising our environmental, social, and cultural systems. Environmentally, the focus is on healing ecosystems. That involves soil health, habitats, biodiversity, and cleaning up toxics and plastics. But it could also involve restoring the innate cooling capacity of the planet. This means regenerating forests for their cloud-seeding and biotic pump, not just their timber or carbon credits. It means restoring marine health for climate regulation, not just fish stocks. The goal can be to enable these systems to return to their climate-modulating potential once again. 

Critically, this regenerative lens could transform how we think about regulations, investments, and subsidies in response to a climate emergency. Because the most potent climate technology available is Life itself. Therefore, funding large-scale ecosystem restoration — from mangrove swamps to peatlands to seabed grasslands — becomes an investment in natural climate engineering. Of course it also buys the potential for enhanced biodiversity, water security, and community resilience, alongside the beautiful intrinsic value of wild habitats. In comparison, those focusing on expensive and energy-hungry machines to capture carbon from air, or trialling means of atmospheric blocking of the sun, can be seen as misunderstanding the complexity of climate within the homeostatic processes of a living planet. 

In addition to the wider climate cooling potential of repairing ecosystems, large forests can also help to moderate some of the local effects of more variable and extreme weather. Therefore, environmental regeneration can be seen as part of the process of adapting to climate change. For instance, rather than just erecting higher seawalls, a regenerative strategy could revive coastal mangrove ecosystems that attenuate storm surges, nurture fisheries, and sequester carbon. For farmers confronting aridification, it means regenerating the soil’s sponge-like capacity through agroecology, reducing irrigation needs while protecting yields. For cities, it could mean creating more water-retentive green spaces to help manage floods. 

Of course the climate adaptation of human societies is as much about culture, politics and economics than it is about ecosystems. By including these aspects of our lived experience, the concept of ‘regenerativity’ may help promote a more holistic understanding of climate chaos and what to do about it. For instance, socially and culturally, we could seek to promote forms of organisation and community that promote well-being and creativity, without relying on further consumption or economic growth. I say ‘could’, because to attempt that authentically, and at scale, we must not sideline politics and economics from our analysis and agenda. 

Transformative failures

One thing I appreciate about the term ‘regenerativity’ is the implicit acceptance of failure. Otherwise, would we only have stuff to generate, not re-generate? If our environment, society and culture weren’t so badly degraded, would we not be talking about greater expansion, improvement, conservation, persistence, or sustainability? So when using the term regeneration authentically, rather than tactically or superficially, we need to acknowledge what it is that has failed, degraded and died, and what we are learning from that. 

I think the concept of regeneration can point us to scientific, economic, political and cultural or spiritual failures, which have culminated in the unfolding ecological failure. Scientifically, those of us modern humans who care about each other and wider Life, have failed to comprehensively understand the complex interactions of living systems in ways that might inform transformative activism and policy agendas. Economically, we have failed to accept that an expansionist monetary system and portfolio-maximising investment strategies have combined to blast through ecological limits, engineer unnecessary wants, and distort public understanding of what is good and true. Politically, we have failed to generate national and international political movements and policy agendas that are sufficiently free from domestic corruption and transnational capitalist control to put people and planet first and foremost. Culturally and spiritually, we modern humans, on average, have failed to experience our interbeing with the environment sufficiently to protect it from harm, and therefore ourselves. 

Together these failures can be observed in the poverty of the modern environmental movement and professions themselves. Professionalisation of environmental concern transformed effort into a technocratic project with neither honesty nor soul. Most of us ended up being campaigners for, or officers of, one faction of global capital involved in lower-carbon energy, promoting the ‘fake green fairytale’ of a managed transition to an electric wonderland where we don’t have to give up anything (something I explained on ABC radio in Australia). Instead, any meaningful use of the concept of ‘regeneration’ or  ‘regenerativity’ must involve accepting our personal and collective wounds, the need for healing and regrowing. It means that we, and our organisations, are involved in nurturing Life, in its various forms. 

For decades I worked with some peak institutions in the world on the topics of Sustainable Development and Corporate Sustainability, such as the United Nations, World Economic Forum and large NGOs. I’ve heard former colleagues sound personally disheartened and dismayed by failure, while maintaining a public charade of positivity about their work. They have been wanting to find a way of incorporating the tragic decline and disruption, while maintaining their professional status, income, and sense of purpose. As a result, some are moving into the idea that adaptation to climate change is the new agenda to lead on. Others are adopting ‘regeneration’ as their label. They say versions of: “sustainability was about being less bad, but in this situation of great loss, we need managers, leaders and entrepreneurs committed to regeneration”. That represents an attempt to recognise failure while avoiding looking at how one has been bystanding that failure, or even helped it to occur through one’s own career choices and the role of one’s profession.   

I don’t blame them. We tend to crave upbeat stories. Even about death, with all the consequences for society that produces. But what such misleading framing of ‘regeneration’ could mean is that many people miss the opportunity for a deeper reckoning, learning, and transformation in their own lives. One of those learnings is that a cause of past failure has been the financial and societal incentives for people in business, government and civil society to express delusional and toxic optimism rather than explain truths which threaten our support for incumbent power. Unfortunately, the sloppy and opportunistic use of regenerativity discourse by consultants and NGOs could mislead people about where to find really authentic and committed folks, who are incorporating a recognition of systemic failure in their desire to nurture Life. More broadly, the chance for a general public awakening on ecological breakdown to then generate transformative agendas, which naturally challenge or move beyond capitalism and imperialism, could be sunk under the deluge of people claiming they are about ‘regenerativity’. 

The power of a term is how it convenes

I’m not claiming there is only one true definition of regeneration and regenerativity. Like any concept, it is a social construction, and we would waste a huge amount of time and energy to chase the impossibility of an uncontested correct definition. Even if we adopt the concept in a devout way,  we must admit we don’t actually know if there is much ecological regeneration-by-humans possible at scale in the context of a destabilising climate. We humans fall into the trap of reification – because there is a word for something, and a history about that word, we think there is a tangible something it corresponds to, rather than pointing at an arbitrary grouping of diverse contextual unfolding effemeral phenomena. That goes for most concepts. Buddhists (and critical discourse theorists) say for all concepts. This realisation doesn’t mean we give up on trying to be clear about what we mean, and why, when we use terms; it means we think critically about what ideas, framings and narratives enable or hamper different parts of society and ways of being. It means we recognise the value of a concept that helps people with similar concerns and intentions to find each other. It means we assess our own use of the term, to make sure we aren’t repackaging our old efforts, or overselling small projects to help the powerful tell a palliative fairytale for all. This approach to concepts is part of the ‘critical wisdom’ we must cultivate in ourselves and society if we are to lessen the harms of living in a metacrisis (as explained in Chapter 8 of my book). 

An academic study reported in 2024 that “notions of regeneration have entered discourses in several fields that are relevant for sustainability, including, among others, ecology, agriculture, economics, management, sociology, psychology and chemistry.” Amongst those fields, agriculture and economics seems most vibrant. Regenerative agriculture, as we understand it at Bekandze Farm, is a land-management practice that actively seeks to improve soils, increase biodiversity, and maintain water cycles, so that the farming can restore the ecosystem of the land rather than depleting it. Similarly, regenerative economics is a framework that views the economy not as a machine to be optimized, but as a living system embedded within the natural world. The idea is there can be economic activities which restore, heal and build the health of social and ecological systems. The concept has been developed by Daniel Christian Wahl and others to apply to whole cultures. That means we design or defend human societies that actively restore, heal and enhance the health and vitality of social and ecological systems. 

With all that in mind, we could ask ourselves more complicated questions than what a regenerative farm, such as my own, could look like. Will there be a regenerative automobile?  A regenerative global financial institution? A regenerative medical profession? If regeneration involves the nurturing of Life, then the bar is set quite high. Could an automobile, whether hybrid or electric, ever be truly regenerating nature and society? It is unlikely — especially if you consider the full life cycle. Instead, projects to help people live closer to work, and use public transport to get there, would be far more Life-nurturing, in various ways. Put that way, I can see an honest use of the term not appealing to corporate executives and consultants and business school academics, who prefer buzz terms to promote themselves to prospective clients and students. It is one reason why I am pleased to have quit my professorship and now work freelance in support of those who aren’t afraid to ask the tough questions of themselves, organisations and society (the Metacrisis Meetings Initiative). 

Having this awareness that any term is as valuable as what it does or doesn’t enable, means that we can also look at the potential shadows of the term regeneration, or regenerativity.  One shadow could be the subtle reassertion of ‘anthropocentrism’ or human-supremacy, where we imagine that humanity must fix wider nature, rather than rediscover a way to live in harmony and partnership with our environment, much like a ‘keystone species’ (something I explore in the latter half of my book Breaking Together). Another shadow could be the exclusive nature of the conversation it invites us into: as only those who aren’t just trying to cope with difficulties are able to discuss how to align their lives with regenerativity. Recognising possible shadows does not negate a concept, or mean everyone who uses the concept is ignoring the shadow: instead, that recognition helps us to address potential limitations, if we wish. 

Deep Adaptation, regeneration and me

For those of you who have followed my work on societal disruption and collapse, might be wondering how an embrace of the concept of regeneration might fit with the existing framework of Deep Adaptation (DA). If you don’t know about that concept, suffice to say it means seeking to adapt personally and collectively to the societal disruption and collapse that arise, directly or indirectly, from climate change and ecological damage . Deep Adaptation was the title of a paper I wrote which went viral, with over a million downloads. Over the years I have noticed many people inspired by their anticipation, acceptance or experience of societal collapse, have been moved to work on nurturing life in particular or in general. They aren’t attached to outcome, but become re-connected with what they most value and cherish, which includes the living world, loved ones, and the processes of creation. In addition, I have been aware that the existing DA framework of 5Rs does not invite much attention to our environment. Therefore, I think it would be useful to support more discussion of what and whom we are nurturing within the context of metacrisis and collapse. Therefore, I am proposing ‘regeneration’ as the sixth R in the DA framework for reflection and conversation. The question we can ask ourselves is: What or whom can we nurture due to our love of Life? Putting it more simply, we can ask: how am I nurturing Life? 

Asking myself that question, I realised that some of my choices in the years since I became collapse aware have been aligned with this Life-nurturing sentiment. At the simplest level, I started rescuing kittens! Initially they were for other people to adopt, as I had bad allergies. But finally, I gave in and rescued one for myself from the Buddhist temple in the north of the island — and overcame my allergies. Then I rescued his likely nephew from the same temple 2 years later. I found them in distress, as I was co-hosting meditation and kirtan retreats at that temple. I have now co-hosted 17, as my small way to enable, in myself and the other participants, both inner calm and outer curiosity, in an interfaith setting. That is also why I play in bands that host kirtans and cacao ceremonies, and am now a dance leader in training, with the Sufi-founded Dances of Universal Peace. It is also why I produced Oracle Cards to help people return to gratitude, wonder and agency in the face of the metacrisis. 

These personal activities may seem less obviously regenerative than the organic farm and farm school I founded, but they have been more central to my sense and expression of love and care. I hope we can find a new business partner or donor who shares similar perspectives and intentions, so we can build the facilities to open a small residential school. I won’t feel attached to that outcome, or sacrifice to get there, as I know that a shift towards a more nurturing intention will express itself in many ways, depending how life unfolds. In that process, I recognise how important it will be to have fellow travellers. It’s why I welcomed the personal focus of questions put to me by podcasters by Carlotta and Catie, and why I will be joining one of the peer mentoring groups of the Metacrisis Initiative (…with the deadline for first cohort of the peer mentoring coming soon).    

Back to climate chaos, and beyond

Our predicament of a rapidly destabilising climate, and overshoot of the capacity of the Earth to sustain humanity, cannot be responded to by subtraction alone. We must couple urgent emissions reductions with a bold, additive strategy of ecological renewal. A panecological understanding of life on Earth points to how a relatively stable climate was a product of a healthy biosphere. By embracing regenerativity as the principle of shaping ways of living that generate more life, health, and potential than they consume, I hope we broaden our field of vision and action on the environmental tragedy that has been unfolding around us. Human survival may depend on recognising that the best way to stabilise our atmosphere is to re-animate our Earth, rather than submit it further to machines. 

Ultimately, regeneration is not a new metric to be achieved, nor a project to save humanity so it can persist a little longer on Earth. Instead, it can be part of the conversation as we reorient our very being — a shift from asking “how long can we last?” to “how fully can we live?” As a new question within the Deep Adaptation framework, it invites us to regard our ‘success’ not in years of survival, but in the depth of our connection to the living world, the creativity we unleash in service of life, and the love we cultivate in the face of loss. It means some of us embracing our role as a ‘keystone species’, not by controlling the planet, but by participating in its healing, and in doing so, healing ourselves. Regeneration, therefore, can invite a conversation about the quality of our existence on this earth, not merely its duration. 

I hope Green School and other educational centres that adopt concepts like regeneration can do so while avoiding any rebranding of failed organisational dynamics and social change strategies, or accidentally sidestepping the lessons from decades of effort on sustainability and social justice. Instead, educational institutions can approach the concept of regeneration with ‘critical wisdom’ to help their students and staff explore a meaningful way of living through metacrisis, disruption, and even societal collapse. It looks like with Regeneration27 and related initiatives, many at the school are taking this matter seriously — I’m hoping to see some ripples.

Thx, Jemx

—

If you have the financial means to help us develop Bekandze Farm School into a destination with accommodation, please get in touch via www.bekandze.net or info@bekandze.net  ….If with lesser means, but a wish to help promote organic farming in Indonesia, please consider our crowdfund.  If you are in Bali in May or August 2026, please consider our weekend retreats at the temple.

Join the Metacrisis Initiative

If a member, then you can see the meetings and decide if you want to join either the salons, the peer mentoring, or both.

Subscribe

Make Patriotism Great Again: some ideas from a British guy abroad

jembendell

I have a strange habit when I am bored. It involves Ricky Gervais. Or rather, some video clips of him on stage. I must have watched him hosting the Golden Globe Awards a dozen times. The film stars are in their tuxedos and gowns, knowing the camera is panning across their faces. Ricky expresses shock at being invited to host again, then takes a sip of beer at the lectern, and tells his audience they shouldn’t try to lecture us on anything, as “most of you have spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg”. He then cracks a joke about Jeffrey Epstein, and as the groan spreads, tells them: “Shut up. I know he was your friend.” The camera cuts to shocked faces in the audience – rather prophetic editing, in retrospect.  

When I watch it, I don’t just smirk. I don’t just recognise it as familiar. I also feel an involuntary pride. That mockery of pomp, deflation of status, and saying what’s uncomfortable. It is a comedy directed at the powerful, and I instinctively place that as something I call “British.” Which is a bit odd, if I think about it. Because it isn’t the pride of seeing a sibling succeed, or a friend flourish at something I helped them work on. The pride arises from my imagined common identity with the kind of attitude and behaviour Gervais is engaged in. It is a story about an “us” that I feel is being embodied by him. But the emotion arrives without analysis: a flash of identification with a national characteristic I like. I know other Brits don’t feel the same way and share an identity around completely different characteristics. And that’s what’s so malleable about our common identities and, therefore, national pride. This got me thinking about ‘patriotism’ today, as someone who emigrated from the UK and now looks back at the country during an era of economic decline, ‘metacrisis’, and even systemic breakdown, which I outlined in the book Breaking Together.

Continue reading “Make Patriotism Great Again: some ideas from a British guy abroad” →

Transcending stories about spirit and matter to act from our wonder about both

jembendell

“If the flesh came into being because of the spirit, it is a wonder. If the spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. But I, I am amazed at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty.” Saying 29 of Jesus, in The Gospel of Thomas. 

Have we modern humans poisoned and degraded our living home and brought society to collapse due to our delusion that we are separate from nature and that nature is separate from the divine? That is a view I’ve had a lot of time for. It was part of my motivation for exploring different religious ideas, as well as taking a revisionist perspective on the religion of my upbringing — Christianity. That led me to look at some of the Gnostic Gospels, over the past year. What I learned has shifted my perspective on the deeper causes of our overly destructive habits as modern humans. In this essay I’ll share my realisations through a focus on one specific saying of Jesus, according to a text called the Gospel of Thomas, which was unknown in the modern world before the 1970s. 

Continue reading “Transcending stories about spirit and matter to act from our wonder about both” →